Running to Stand Still
by Blackbirdox
Summary: He supposes that maybe the drugs started with Neil, the shock and the pain of all that and the inability to cope with it.


**Disclaimer: I most definitely own all the rights to Dead Poets Society. And Charlie, of course. **

**A/N: I really needed something to help me get over my writers block so I just wrote whatever came to mind and this was the end result. I was also playing around with my writing style a little so I'm curious to see how this goes. I was a little torn over how to rate this and though I ultimately went with T, it seems fair to warn you that the subject matter may warrent a higher rating. Just a heads up. Any and all feedback is, as always, greatly appreciated. **

A needle pinches and the world explodes in bursts and blurs of color and sound and light. Things become hazy and distant, dreamlike. Time crawls. Voices fade.

He can't remember how he got here.

He wakes in an empty room on a dirty bed with stained sheets that smell like cigarettes. His head aches, his throat burns. His mouth is sour with the bitter taste of bile and his arm is sore and numb beneath the constraints of a forgotten tourniquet, still tied above the juncture of his elbow.

He utters a small groan as he reaches over and yanks it off, joints creaking and cracking in protest. He flexes his arm until it tingles and prickles with the feeling of flowing blood and then he forces his way out of bed, stomach rolling with a wave of nausea.

He stumbles off to the bathroom and avoids the mirror, the sight of taut and sallow skin and hollow eyes.

There's a visible indent on his skin from the tourniquet and his arm is riddled with tracks and with bruises, old and fresh, yellow and green and an angry shade of purple. He traces them absently with trembling fingers, traces the curves of his veins, bright blue beneath translucent skin. Most of them are shot by now but there's still one that seems promising, one down around the curve of his wrist, so he reaches for the bag beneath the sink.

It has everything in there- the syringe and the spoon and the smack. He mixes and measures carefully, gives the syringe a flick on the side before tying a fresh tourniquet, smacking at his skin to raise his veins until he can feel the shape of them beneath the pads of his fingers.

He doesn't hesitate, not anymore. He aligns the needle, closes his eyes, and pushes, shattering the silence of the room with a gasp, a mix of pleasure and pain.

The relief is instant, relaxing his muscles and quelling the turning of his stomach. He sinks into a crouch on the floor, frail arms wrapped around knobby knees, back pressed against the wall.

His head whirls, his vision swims. He just drifts, floats as if at sea, wafting in and out of consciousness.

He can't remember how he got here.

It started years ago, back when he was seventeen. He didn't know any better then, didn't know to avoid it. Now he doesn't know how to get away from it.

It was supposed to be a one time thing but the high, the _rush_, was a trigger for something he never knew he wanted- not until it became _everything _he wanted.

It had started slowly and blossomed like a flower, like spilled wine on a carpet, growing and growing and growing. It seeped into his life with ease, effortless ease, pummeling boundaries and alienating people, taking over until it was everything, the only thing he had.

It left him broke, left him with nothing but run down apartments, shady deals in shady hotels and even shadier friends.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

He can't remember how he got here.

He wakes up on the floor, limbs heavy and head throbbing, the tile cool against his clammy cheek.

He licks his dry lips and thinks he should get up but ultimately decides against it, thinks that it might be too much effort. He considers that it might be a good idea to eat something, tries to remember the last time he _had_ eaten but he can't so he figures it doesn't matter. He tries to determine whether or not he hears the phone ringing but he decides he doesn't care. He doesn't want to talk to anyone anyway.

He stares up at the dirty ceiling, at the water stains and the cracked plaster that are so far off from what he's used to, from what he grew up with.

Money, he thinks. He'd grown up with money, with privilege and with a name.

_Dalton._

He'd been a Dalton- someone who'd meant something, someone of value.

Charlie had been invincible, had had the world at his feet. He could have been anything he wanted to be and this is what he'd settled for- anonymity and invisibility, passing out on bathroom floors and waking to reach for another shot, endless running on a road to nowhere.

He can't remember how he got here.

He supposes that maybe the drugs started with Neil, the shock and the pain of all that and the inability to cope with it. But then again, maybe they didn't.

Maybe they started with cigarettes and alcohol, smoking behind the school, stealing drinks from the liquor cabinet, trying pot over the summer.

Maybe they started with a neighbor he'd had, one who'd died too young. Overdose, his mother had said, scoffed at it like a dirty word- sparking Charlie's curiousity.

Maybe they started farther back, back when he was a kid, back with his parents and all the fighting- his mother with a black eye and swollen lip, his father with his drink, swaying unsteadily on his feet.

Maybe it was just something that he was supposed to fall into- the bored kid with money to burn and nothing better to do.

Maybe nothing started it at all.

He doesn't know.

He can't remember how he got here.

He studies the syringe as he presses the plunger, thinks that maybe it's the wrong amount but then again, maybe it isn't.

A needle pinches and the world explodes- not in light, but in darkness.


End file.
